Psychosis and Other Psychology Terms

Psychosis is a loss of contact with reality, it usually characterized with hallucinations and delusions. A Hallucination is a disorder in the way things are sensed. One may hear voices, see things, or smell things that are not present. Auditory hallucinations are most common. A delusion is a disorder in the way one thinks; the most common delusions are those of grandeur and persecution, these are when one thinks that they very important or that someone is out to get them when in reality there is no good reason to think this. When patients experience psychosis, they may be confused, depressed, disorganized, delusional, hallucinate, and be paranoid. Some who suffer from psychosis have difficulty with everyday things in life such as having a job, driving, and communicating with others. Psychosis could be caused by schizophrenia, alcohol and other drugs, major depression with psychotic features, bipolar disorder, dementia disorders, epilepsy, brain tumors and even a stroke. Psychosis is often treated with psychotherapy and medication depending on the cause if the psychosis.

Psychosis is depicted in the movie A Scanner Darkly. In this movie, a fictional highly addictive drug called Substance D has taken over the United States and the government has sent undercover agents to find the supplier. Bob Arctor is an undercover officer; he lives with roommates, Luckman and Barris. Freck is a friend of the household. They are all excessive drug users. They spend the day using drugs and having useless arguments and hallucinated conversations. Freck has no job, is paranoid, shaky and does not like being touched. He knows something is wrong with him because he constantly hallucinates about having bugs on him and his dog. He picks them up and p...

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...t brain implies a split personality, but this also seems to be a common misconception. Split brain deals with communication between the two hemispheres of the brain dealing with the same object like a picture of a cat, but with split brain one would see that cat but not be able to express it is a cat because the two hemispheres do different things. Personality is much more than that, it is how one interacts with the world.

I think this movie accurately portrayed the substance abuse of Substance D and other drugs causing substance-induced psychosis in the characters. This psychosis interfered with their lives and cost them their jobs and peace of mind. The disorder was not schizophrenia because eventually the psychosis went away after not bring on the substance anymore. I do not think the split-brain test leading them to believe he had schizophrenia and was accurate